Peasant Movements And Nationalism In The 1920-30

During the nineteenth century, peasant discontent with established authority was a common occurrence. However, in the twentieth century, the movements that arose from this discontent had a new feature: they were profoundly influenced by and, in turn, had a significant impact on the on-going struggle for national freedom. We will recount the storey of three important peasant struggles that emerged in the second and third decades of the country: the Kisan Sabha and Eka movements in Avadh, Uttar Pradesh, the Mappila rebellion in Malabar, and the Bardoli Satyagraha in Gujarat, to illustrate the complexity of this relationship.

 

•    Following the annexation of Avadh in 1856, the taluqdars, or big landlords, strengthened their grip on the province's agrarian society in the second half of the nineteenth century. 

 

•    Exorbitant rents, illegal levies, renewal fees or nazrana, and arbitrary evictions or bedakhli had resulted, making life difficult for the majority of the cultivators. 

 

•    The high cost of food and other necessities that accompanied and followed World War I made oppression even more unbearable, and the tenants of Avadh were ripe for a message of defiance.

 

•    The more active members of the Home Rule League in Uttar Pradesh were the ones who started the process of organising the province's peasants into kisan sabhas on modern lines. 

 

•    The Uttar Pradesh Kisan Sabha was founded in February 1918, thanks to the efforts of Gauri Shankar Misra and Indra Narain Dwivedi, as well as Madan Mohan Malaviya's support. 

 

•    The Uttar Pradesh Kisan Sabha was very active, and by June 1919, it had established at least 450 branches in 173 tehsils across the state. As a result of this activity, a large number of kisan delegates from Uttar Pradesh attended the Indian National Congress sessions in Delhi and Amritsar in December 1918 and 1919.

 

•    The reports of a nai-dhobi band (a type of social boycott) on an estate in Pratapgarh district near the end of 1919 were the first signs of grass-roots peasant activity. 

 

•    Kisan meetings called by village panchayats became common in the villages of taluqdari Avadh by the summer of 1920. This development was linked to the names Thinguri Singh and Durgapal Singh. But soon after, another leader, Baba Ramchandra, rose to prominence as the rallying point. 

 

Baba Ramchandra: A Maharashtra Brahmin, was a wanderer who left home at the age of thirteen, worked as an indentured labourer in Fiji, and eventually arrived in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, in 1909. 

 

•    He wandered around as a sadhu until 1920, carrying a copy of Tulsidas' Ramayan on his back and reciting verses to rural audiences from it. 

 

•    He rose to prominence as a leader of Avadh's peasants in the middle of 1920, and quickly demonstrated considerable leadership and organisational abilities. 

 

•    Baba Ramchandra led a group of tenants from the Jaunpur and Pratapgarh districts to Allahabad in June 1920. 

 

•    He met Gauri Shankar Misra and Jawaharlal Nehru there and asked them to accompany him to the villages to see for themselves the tenants' living conditions. As a result, between June and August, Jawaharlal Nehru visited the rural areas several times and formed close ties with the Kisan Sabha movement.

 

Meanwhile, the kisans found comfort in Mehta, the Deputy Commissioner of Pratapgarh, who promised to look into the complaints that had been forwarded to him. The Kisan Sabha in village Roor, Pratapgarh district, became a hub of activity, with approximately one lakh tenants reportedly filing complaints with the Sabha for a fee of one anna each. During this time, Gauri Shankar Mia was also very active in Pratapgarh, and was in the process of negotiating with Mehta over some of the most important tenant complaints, such as bedakhli and nazrana. However, when Mehta went on leave in August 1920, the taluqdars took advantage of the opportunity to strike at the growing kisan movement.

 

•    On August 28, 1920, they were successful in having Ramchandra and thirty-two kisans arrested on a fabricated theft charge. Indignant, 4,000 to 5,000 Kisans gathered at Pratapgarh to see their leaders imprisoned, only to be dispersed after much persuasion.

 

•    A rumour that Gandhiji was coming to secure Baba Ramchandra's release brought tens of thousands of kisans to Pratapgarh ten days later, and this time they only returned to their homes after Baba Ramchandra gave them darshan from atop a sugar-cane field tree. Their numbers had swelled to 60,000 by this point. 

 

•    Mehta was summoned from his vacation to deal with the situation, and he quickly dropped the theft charge and attempted to persuade the landlords to change their ways. 

 

•    This easy victory, on the other hand, instilled new confidence in the movement, which proliferated.

 

•    Meanwhile, the Calcutta Congress had chosen the path of non-cooperation, and many U.P. nationalists had pledged their allegiance to the new political path. Others, such as Madan Mohan Malaviya, preferred to concentrate on constitutional agitation. 

 

•    These divisions were reflected in the U.P. Kisan Sabha as well, and on October 17, 1920, the Non-Co-operators established an alternative Oudh Kisan Sabha at Pratapgarh. 

 

•    Through the efforts of Misra, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mata Badal Pande, Baba Ramchandra, Deo Narayan Pande, and Kedar Nath, the new organisation was able to bring under its wing over 330 grassroots kisan sabhas in the districts of Avadh in the previous few months. 

 

•    The Oudh Kisan Sabha urged kisans to refuse to till bedakhli land, to refrain from offering hari and begar (unpaid labour), to boycott those who refused to accept these conditions, and to settle their disputes through panchayats. 

 

•    The Sabha's first major show of strength was a rally on the 20th and 21st of December in Ayodhya, near Faizabad, which drew around 100,000 peasants. Baba Ramchandra appeared at the rally, bound in ropes to represent the oppression of the Kisans. 

 

•    The Kisan Sabha movement was distinguished by the presence of kisans from both the high and low castes among its ranks. The nature of peasant activity, however, changed dramatically in January 1921. The districts of Rae Bareli, Faizabad, and, to a lesser extent, Sultanpur, were the epicentres of activity. 

 

•    The looting of bazaars, houses, and granaries followed a pattern of clashes with the police. 

 

•    Some, like those in Munshiganj and Rae Bareli's Karhaiya Bazaar, were sparked by the arrests or rumours of the arrest of leaders. Local figures such as sadhus, holy men, and disinherited expropriators often took the lead, rather than recognised Kisan Sabha activists. 

 

•    The government, on the other hand, had little trouble putting a stop to these riots. Crowds were shot at and dispersed, leaders and activists were arrested, cases were filed, and the movement was over by the end of January, with the exception of a few incidents in February and March. 

 

•    The Seditious Meetings Act was enacted in March to cover the affected districts, effectively halting all political activity. Nationalists continued to defend the tenants' cases in court, but they couldn't do much else. 

 

•    Meanwhile, the government pushed through the Oudh Rent (Amendment) Act, which, while providing little relief to the tenants, helped to raise hopes and, in some ways, contributed to the movement's demise.

 

•    Peasant discontent erupted again in Avadh toward the end of the year, but this time the epicentres were the northern districts of Hardoi, Bahraich, and Sitapur. The initial impetus came from Congress and Khilafat leaders, and the movement became known as the Eka, or unity movement. 

 

•    The main complaints here were about the extraction of a rent that was generally 50% higher than the recorded rent, the oppression of thekedars who were entrusted with rent collection, and the practise of share-rents. 

 

•    The Eka meetings were preceded by a religious ritual in which a hole in the ground was dug and filled with water to represent the Ganges, a priest was brought in to preside, and the assembled peasants ‘owed that they would pay only the recorded rent but pay it on time, would not leave when ejected, would refuse to do forced labour, would not assist criminals, and would abide by the panchayat's rules. 

 

•    The Eka Movement, on the other hand, quickly developed its own grassroots leadership in the form of Madari Pasi and other low-caste leaders who were not particularly inclined to accept the Congress and Khilafat leaders' call for nonviolence. 

 

•    As a result, the movement's ties to nationalists deteriorated, and it went off on its own. Unlike the earlier Kisan Sabha movement, which was almost entirely made up of tenants, the Eka Movement included a large number of small zamindars who were fed up with the government's heavy land revenue demands. 

 

•    However, by March 1922, the authorities had successfully put an end to the Eka Movement through severe repression.

•    Peasant unrest erupted in Kerala's Malabar district in August 1921. Tenants of Mappila (Muslim) revolted here. Their complaints included a lack of security of tenure, renewal fees, high rents, and other obnoxious landlord demands. 

 

•    There had been cases of Mappila resistance to landlord oppression in the nineteenth century as well, but what erupted in 1921 was on a much larger scale. 

 

•    The Malabar District Congress Conference, held in Manjeri in April 1920, was the catalyst for resistance. 

 

•    The tenants' cause was supported at this conference, which called for legislation to regulate landlord-tenant relationships. The change was significant because the landlords had previously succeeded in preventing the Congress from supporting the tenants' cause. 

 

•    Following the Manjeri conference, a tenants' association was formed in Kozhikode, and tenants' associations were soon formed in other parts of the district.

 

•    At the same time, the Khilafat Movement was expanding its territory. In fact, there was little difference between Khilafat and tenants' meetings; the leaders and audiences were interchangeable, and the two movements were inextricably linked. 

 

•    The Mappila tenants formed the majority of the movement's social base, and Hindus were conspicuously absent, though the movement did have a number of Hindu leaders. 

 

•    On 5 February 1921, the Government issued prohibitory notices on all Khilafat meetings, alarmed by the growing popularity of the Khilafat-cum-tenant agitation, which had gotten a boost from Gandhiji, Shaukat Au, and Maulana Azad's visits. Yakub Hasan, U. Gopala Menon, P. Moideen Koya, and K. Madhavan Nair, all prominent Khilafat and Congress leaders, were arrested on February 18. As a result, the leadership was passed down to the local Mappila leaders.

 

•    The Mappilas began to show increasing signs of turbulence and defiance of authority, angered by repression and encouraged by rumours that the British, weakened by the World War, were no longer in a position to take strong military action. But it wasn't until the District Magistrate of Eranad taluq that the final break came. 

 

•    On August 20, 1921, E.F. Thomas raided the mosque at Tirurangadi, accompanied by a contingent of police and troops, to arrest Ali Musaliar, a Khilafat leader and a highly respected priest. They arrested only three relatively insignificant Khilafat volunteers.

 

•    However, word spread that the British army had raided and destroyed the famous Mambrath mosque, of which Au-Musaliar was the priest. Soon after, Mappilas from Kottakkal, Tanur, and Parappanagadi converged on Tirurangadi, where their leaders met with British officers in an attempt to secure the release of the arrested volunteers. 

 

•    The crowd was peaceful and quiet, but the police opened fire on the unarmed crowd, killing many people. Government offices were destroyed, records were burned, and the treasury was looted as a result of the clash. The rebellion quickly spread to the Mappila strongholds of Eranad, Walluvanad, and Ponnani taluqs.

 

•    The unpopular jenmies (landlords), mostly Hindu, were attacked in the early stages of the rebellion, as were symbols of government authority such as kutcheris (courts), police stations, treasuries and offices, and British planters. 

 

•    Rebels would travel many miles through Hindu-populated territory, attacking only the landlords and burning their records, leaving the poor Hindus alone. Some rebel leaders, such as Kunhammed Haji, went to great lengths to ensure that Hindus were not harassed or looted, and even punished those among the rebels who attacked Hindus. 

 

•    Kunhammed Haji made no distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims, ordering the execution and punishment of a number of pro-government Mappilas.

 

•    The character of the rebellion changed dramatically after the British declared martial law and repression began in earnest. Many Hindus were either forced or willingly assisted the authorities, feeling anti-Hindu sentiment among the poor illiterate Mappilas, who were motivated by a strong religious ideology in any case. 

 

•    As the sense of desperation grew, so did forced conversions, attacks on Hindus, and murders of Hindus. What started out as a primarily anti-government and anti-landlord protest took on strong communal overtones. The Mappilas' use of violence had already strained relations with the Non-Cooperation Movement, which was founded on the principle of nonviolence. 

 

•    The Mappilas' isolation was completed when the rebellion was communalized. The rest was done by British repression, and by December 1921, all resistance had ceased. The death toll was staggering: 2,337 Mappilas had perished. Unofficial estimates put the figure at more than 10,000. A total of 45,404 insurgents were apprehended or surrendered. 

 

•    However, the cost was even higher, though in a very different way. The militant Mappilas were completely crushed and demoralised from then on, and their participation in any form of politics was almost non-existent until independence. They did not join the national movement or the peasant movement that grew in Kerala under the Left's leadership in later years.

 

•    Peasant movements in Uttar Pradesh and Malabar were thus inextricably linked to national politics. The Home Rule Leagues had provided the impetus in Uttar Pradesh, followed by the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movement. 

 

•    It was difficult to tell the difference between a non-cooperation meeting and a peasant rally in Avadh in the early months of 1921, when peasant activity was at its peak. 

 

•    In Malabar, a similar situation arose when the Khilafat and tenants' meetings were combined into one. However, in both cases, the peasants' use of violence created a barrier between them and the national movement, prompting nationalist leaders to appeal to the peasants to refrain from using violence. 

 

•    National leaders, particularly Gandhiji, frequently advised peasants to refrain from taking extreme measures such as refusing to pay rent to landlords. 

 

•    The disparity between peasant and local leaders' actions and perceptions and national leaders' understanding was frequently interpreted as a sign of the middle class or bourgeois leadership's fear that the movement would fall into the hands of supposedly more radical and militant people's leaders. 

 

•    The call for restraint, both in terms of demands and in terms of methods, is seen as evidence of concern for Indian society's landlords and property owners. It is possible; however, that the national leadership's advice was motivated by a desire to protect peasants from the consequences of violent revolt, consequences that were not hidden for long, as the governments in both Uttar Pradesh and Malabar repressed the movements. 

 

•    Other considerations may have influenced their advice that peasants should not push landlords too far by refusing to pay rent. The peasants did not demand the abolition of rent or landlordism; instead, they demanded an end to evictions, illegal levies, and exorbitant rents, which the national leadership backed. 

 

•    The use of extreme measures such as refusing to pay rent was likely to push even small landlords deeper into the government's clutches, destroying any chance of them remaining neutral in the on-going conflict between the government and the national movement.

 

•    In many ways, the no-tax movement that began in the Bardoli taluq of Gujarat's Surat district in 1928 was a child of the Non-cooperation days.

 

•    In 1922, the Bardoli taluq was chosen as the location from which Gandhiji would launch his civil disobedience campaign, but events in Chauri Chaura changed everything, and the campaign never got off the ground. 

 

•    However, due to the various preparations for the civil disobedience movement, a significant change had occurred in the area, and the end result was that Bardoli had undergone a process of intense politicisation and awareness of the political scene.

 

•    Local leaders such as the Mehta brothers, Kalyanji and Kunverji, and Dayalji Desai had worked tirelessly to spread the Non-Cooperation Movement's message. These leaders, who had been active in the district as social reformers and political activists for at least a decade before Non-cooperation, had established many national schools, persuaded students to leave government schools, organised a boycott of foreign cloth and liquor, and seized control of the Surat municipality. 

 

•    The Bardoli Congressmen had settled down to intense constructive work following the withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation Movement. After being chastised by Gandhiji in 1922 for doing nothing to help the taluq's low-caste untouchables and tribal inhabitants — known as Kaliparaj (dark people) to distinguish them from the high caste or Ujaliparaj (fair people) and accounting for 60% of the taluq's population — these men from the high castes began working among the Kaliparaj. 

 

•    These ashrams, many of which still exist today as living institutions dedicated to tribal education, contributed significantly to the taluq's recovery from the demoralisation that followed the withdrawal of 1922. 

 

•    Kunverji Mehta and Keshavji Ganeshji learned the tribal dialect and, with the help of educated Kaliparaj community members, created a ‘Kaliparaj literature' that contained poems and prose that enraged the Kaliparaj against the Hali system, in which they worked as hereditary labourers for upper-caste landowners, and exhorted them to avoid intoxicating drinks and high marriages. 

 

•    The message was spread using bhajan mandalis made up of Kaliparaj and Ujaliparaj members. Night schools were established to educate the Kaliparaj, and a school for Kaliparaj children was established in Bardoli town in 1927. 

 

•    Upper-caste landowners were frequently hostile to ashram workers, who feared that all of this would ‘spoil' their labour. Annual Kaliparaj conferences began in 1922, and in 1927, Gandhiji, who presided over the annual conference, launched an investigation into the conditions of the Kaliparaj, whom he renamed Raniparaj, or forest dwellers, rather than the derogatory term Kaliparaj, or dark people. 

 

•    The investigation was led by many prominent Gujarati figures, including Narhari Parikh and Jugatram Dave, and turned into a harsh indictment of the Hall system, money lender exploitation, and upper-caste sexual exploitation of women.

 

•    As a result, the Congress had established a significant base among the Kaliparaj and could rely on their support in the future. Simultaneously, the Ashram workers continued to work among the landowning peasants, regaining some influence among them. 

 

•    As a result, when it was revealed in January 1926 that Jayakar, the officer in charge of reassessing the taluq's land revenue demand, had recommended a thirty percent increase over the previous assessment, Congress leaders were quick to object, forming the Bardoli Inquiry Committee to investigate the matter. Its report, which was released in July 1926, concluded that the increase was unjustified. This was followed by a press campaign, with Young India and Navjivan, edited by Gandhiji, taking the lead. The issue was also taken up by the area's constitutionalist leaders, including members of the Legislative Council.

 

•    The government reduced the enhancement to 21.97% in July 1927. The concessions, however, were insufficient and came too late to satisfy anyone. The constitutionalist leaders began advising peasants to resist by only paying the current amount and withholding the increased amount. 

 

•    The ‘Ashram' group, on the other hand, argued that if there was to be any impact on the government, the entire amount had to be withheld. The peasants, on the other hand, appeared to be more inclined to follow the moderate leaders' advice at this point.

 

•    Gradually, however, as the constitutional leadership's limitations became more apparent, and their unwillingness to lead even a movement based on the refusal of the increased amount became clear, the peasants began to gravitate toward the Congress leaders known as the "Ashram" group. 

 

•    In the meantime, the latter had contacted Vallabhbhai Patel and was persuading him to take over the movement's leadership.

 

•     Vallabhbhai was formally invited to lead the campaign at a meeting of representatives from sixty villages in Kadod division's Bamni. 

 

•    Local leaders met Gandhiji and obtained his approval after assuring him that the peasants were fully aware of the implications of such a campaign. 

 

•    Patel arrived in Bardoli on February 4th and held a series of meetings with peasant representatives and constitutionalist leaders right away. 

 

•    The moderate leaders told the audience at one of these meetings that their methods had failed and that they should now try Vallabhbhai's methods. 

 

•    Vallabhbhai explained the ramifications of the peasants' proposed course of action and advised them to think about it for a week. He then returned to Ahmedabad and wrote a letter to the Governor of Bombay, explaining the errors in the settlement report and requesting that an independent investigation be appointed; otherwise, he wrote, he would have to advise the peasants to refuse to pay the Land revenue and suffer the consequences. 

 

•    On the 12th of February, Patel returned to Bardoli and briefed the peasants' representatives on the situation, including the government's curt response. 

 

•    A meeting of the occupants of Bardoli taluq passed a resolution advising all landowners to refuse payment of the revised assessment until the government appoints an independent tribunal or accepts the current amount as full payment. 

 

•    Peasants were asked to swear not to pay the land revenue in the name of Prabhu (the Hindu name for god) and Khuda (the Muslim name for god). 

 

•    The resolution was followed by recitations of sacred texts from the Gita and the Koran, as well as songs by Kabir, the Hindu-Muslim unity symbol. The Satyagraha was in full swing. 

 

•    He had emerged as a leader of Gujarat second only to Gandhiji, having participated in the Kheda Satyagraha, the Nagpur Flag Satyagraha, and the Borsad Punitive Tax Satyagraha. 

 

•    His abilities as an organiser, speaker, tireless campaigner, and motivator of ordinary men and women were already well known, but the women of Bardoli bestowed the title of Sardar upon him. 

 

•    The Sardar divided the taluq into thirteen workers' camps or Chhavanis, each under the command of an experienced leader, as residents of Bardoli recall the stirring effect of his speeches, which he delivered in an idiom and style that was close to the peasant's heart. 

 

•    The movement's army was made up of a hundred political workers from across the province, aided by 1,500 volunteers, many of whom were students. 

 

•    A publishing house was established, which published the daily Bardoli Satyagraha Patrika. Reports on the movement, speeches by leaders, pictures of the jabti or confiscation proceedings, and other news were all included in this Patrika. This was distributed by a volunteer army to the taluq's farthest reaches. 

 

•    The movement also had its own intelligence wing, tasked with identifying the indecisive peasants. 

 

•    Members of the intelligence wing would follow them around at all hours of the day and night to make sure they didn't pay their dues, gather information about government moves, particularly the possibility of jabti (confiscation), and then warn the villagers to lock up their homes or flee to Baroda.

 

•    The main method of mobilisation was extensive propaganda delivered through meetings, speeches, pamphlets, and door-to-door persuasion. 

 

•    Women activists such as Mithuben Petit, a Parsi lady from Bombay, Bhaktiba, Darbar Gopaldas' wife, Maniben Patel, the Sardar's daughter, Shardaben Shah, and Sharda Mehta were recruited for the purpose. As a result, women frequently outnumbered men at meetings and remained steadfast in their refusal to succumb to government threats. Students were also targeted, and they were asked to persuade their families to maintain their weight loss.

 

•    Social pressure and threats of social boycott were used to bring those who showed signs of weakness into line. Caste and village panchayats were effectively used for this purpose, and those who opposed the movement faced being denied essential services from sweepers, barbers, washermen, and agricultural labourers, as well as being socially boycotted by their relatives and neighbours. 

 

•    These threats were usually enough to keep any weakening at bay. Government officials were subjected to the most severe forms of pressure. They were denied supplies, services, and transportation, making it nearly impossible for them to carry out their official responsibilities. 

 

•    During this movement, the Congress leaders' work among the Kaliparaj people paid off, and the government's attempts to use them against the upper caste peasants were a complete failure. Sardar Patel and his colleagues also worked tirelessly to ensure that they had the support of the constitutionalist and moderate leadership, as well as public opinion, on all major issues. 

 

•    As a result, the Government soon found that even its supporters and sympathisers, as well as neutral men, were abandoning its cause. Many members of the Bombay Legislative Council who were not hot-headed extremists, such as K.M. Munshi and Laiji Naranji, representatives of the Indian Merchants Chamber, resigned their seats. 

 

•    The country's public opinion was becoming increasingly restive and anti-government. Peasants in many parts of the Bombay Presidency threatened to agitate for a revision of their respective revenue assessments. 

 

•    Workers in Bombay textile mills were on strike, and it was feared that Patel and the Bombay Communists would join forces to force a railway strike, preventing troops and supplies from reaching Bardoli. 

 

•    The Bombay Youth League and other organisations had organised large public meetings and demonstrations in Bombay. Punjab offered to send jathas to Bardoli on foot.

On August 2, 1928, Gandhiji moved to Bardoli in order to take over the leadership of the movement if Patel was arrested. Overall, a retreat, if it could be disguised with a face-saving device, appeared to be the best option for the government.